


The Loveliest, Shame

by songlin



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M, Slash, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 04:58:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Perhaps our behavior was, indeed, shameful. If that is how mankind wishes it, than so shall it be. But be that in fact so, I shall hold that of all sweet passions, shame is the loveliest." An interlude from after the Five Orange Pips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loveliest, Shame

I must confess that in these biographies I have not been entirely honest. To be sure, I have left out a number of cases that were resolved too easily, embellished in places those which were somewhat less thrilling, and most egregiously and discriminately eliminated many exchanges between Sherlock Holmes and I. I committed these sins of omission through no ill intent, merely through a desire for a small vestige of privacy. All stories require a little flavoring in order to be palatable to the common man, but mine have necessitated abundant exclusions not only to remain concise, but also to save Holmes and I from persecution by society and even the law.

Rest assured that we have committed no crime so great as to cast our souls into Hell, nor even have we harmed another living being. It is simply a crime that has been cast as one by the prejudices and prudishness of society. It is a crime for which children throw rotten fruit at great artists and cry "Shame!" as the artist attempts in vain to vindicate himself.

Perhaps our behavior was, indeed, shameful. If that is how mankind wishes it, than so shall it be. But be that in fact so, I shall hold that of all sweet passions, shame is the loveliest.

 

I.

My companion and I had always realized our friendship was somewhat unusual. Even after my marriage to sweet Mary I found myself frequently returning to Baker Street to visit, sometimes for days at a time. My wife was very tolerant of these sudden disappearances, which in hindsight should have illuminated for me the extent of her instinctual knowledge and perhaps unspoken acceptance.

Upon many of my visits, which were usually unexpected, I would be almost immediately thrust into a fascinating mystery of great proportions, upon which Holmes would insist that I come along. These jaunts would sometimes go on for days, during which I slept in my old rooms at Baker Street and sent a message to Mary that I was assisting Holmes in a case. But on other visits, I would arrive to find my dear companion alone and restless, testing the smells of various poisons when burnt or playing furiously on his violin. I would sense his need for companionship and badger him into going out with me or at least allowing me to stay for dinner.

The most frightening incident, the one that forever changed our lives and our friendship, occurred not long after the mystery of the Five Orange Pips, during which Holmes failed to avenge the murder of his client to his deepest shame. After he had confided in me how thoroughly his pride had been injured I insured that he would be able for the next day or two, as I felt it would be prudent to spent at least one night at home with my wife. He assured me that he would be fine, and I took a cab home.

Mary was worried, having not heard from me in some days. She apologized for dinner being somewhat casual and insisted I allow her to make it up to me. I agreed and we turned in early, around eight o'clock.

Sometime during the latest hours of the night that begin to border on the morning I bolted awake from a terrible nightmare. I was filled with a hideous dread that some awful calamity had occurred. As I leapt from the bed, Mary rolled over, only half awake.

"John," she murmured, "what is possibly the matter?"

"I am not entirely sure," I replied as I dressed as quickly as I could. "I feel as if something is very wrong. You," here I smiled, feeling a little foolish, "seem to be alright, barring the sudden ruckus made by your horribly neglectful husband! Go back to sleep, darling."

"Everything is probably well, but I know you will not sleep until you have made sure," said she. "Go see your friend, John, and do let me know all is alright." She had hardly finished her sentence before I was out the door.

There were few cabs at that hour, so I was forced to be rather louder than I wished in calling one and roused the ire of the neighbors. Throughout the cab ride, I attempted to calm the quivering of my nerves. I was no longer struck thoroughly with a terrible fear, but it ever pulsed in the pit of my stomach. It was nothing, I assured myself, though my words did little to calm me.

In my dream, Holmes and I were sitting in the parlor. Outside a horrible storm howled and sobbed through the chimney as if weeping. There came a knock at the door.

"At this hour?" Holmes mused. "A friend of yours perhaps, Watson?"

"More likely my wife, wondering what I could possibly be doing," I said wryly. "Do fetch the door, Holmes. If it is Mary I should like a moment to pretend to be awfully busy."

He pattered down the hall and to the door. I heard it open and after that, nothing. Curious, I stood and peered around the corner.

The door was open. Neither Holmes nor Mary nor any kind of friend or stranger could be found.

With the logic one follows only in dreams, I slowly turned back towards the parlor. There was a sound, like a fluttering of wings, from by the fireplace, and I ran towards it with a cry.

My friend Holmes lay spread on the floor in front of the fireplace, lips frozen parted as if in pain or ecstasy, his eyes wide and staring blankly at the ceiling, empty of all life.

I do not remember if I made a sound when I fell to his side and searched for a pulse, but I remember the strange sensation of his skin. Although one usually feels nothing in dreams, I recall his skin felt oddly soft, almost like very fine velvet, and cool.

As I touched him, he seemed to fall apart before my eyes, and I cried out in horror. But it was not into fragments of flesh that he fell, but into flowers, thousands and thousands of furiously red poppy flowers. His face seemed to almost crumble beneath my fingers, and I realized--it was petals. His skin felt like flower petals.

The carriage clattered to a stop. I made a conscious effort to take the steps slowly, trying to calm the trembling in my hands. There was no reply to my knock, which did not surprise me, considering the hour, so I used the key I had kept.

The house was silent and the lights were out. This did not reassure me as it should have. I stood perfectly still in the foyer, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness and listening for any alien sounds.

Then, from upstairs, there came a sigh that raised the hairs on the back of my neck like a chill in the room. It was the kind of sound you heard in hospitals when a man was only a few dozen breaths from his last, or on a battlefield when a soldier stared down the barrel of the gun he knew would kill him. It reminded me suddenly and terribly of the fluttering of wings from my dream.

This sound, this horrible sound that nearly caused me to faint dead away, came from Holmes's room.

I do not remember running up the stairs, but I remember standing in the doorway and seeing my dearest friend on the floor next to his bed, snarled in his bedsheets, half-naked, shaking like he was freezing and sweating so heavily the linens were nearly transparent.

"Holmes!" I cried, falling to the floor beside him and clutching his hand.

He opened his eyes. The pain I saw in them resounded through me like the striking of a drum. "Watson, old boy," he said with great effort, "good of you to stop by so soon."

I went to work untangling him from his sheets. "I had a dream," I said wildly by way of explanation, "and I could not shake the feeling it gave me. I had to--"

"Dreams, the mind's fondest refuge," he said absently.

"Stop fooling about and get up, Holmes," I snapped, forcing a show of anger. It was the cocaine, that damnable poison. I had never seen him so affected by it. I looped my arms under his and pulled him up and into bed with far less effort than it should have taken. Holmes had lost weight.

He sighed and laid back. "I think I should be well now, my dear fellow. You should go home to Mary and your warm bed."

"I rather think you are most certainly _not_ well," I said firmly.

"All for the best," he replied. "It is so much more pleasant with you here."

I insinuated from his casual remark more than he meant to say. "There are far more pleasant pastimes than your seven-per-cent solution and frightening your only friend!" 

"Ah, but none more pleasant than you, old boy," he murmured drowsily.

And here, I realized something vitally important about Sherlock Holmes.

It is impossible to describe the sensations which this revelation awoke in me unless you have felt them yourself. I had initially been aware of their stirrings upon first meeting Holmes. The first sight of his face, first sound of his voice, first observations of his peculiar manner of behavior all awoke in me a fascination the likes of which I had felt for no other human being, male or female. It must be admitted that I felt an affinity with him far stronger than that which I shared with any lady, even my wife.

As time went by and our kinship grew stronger, we both noticed little mannerisms and patterns of speech we adopted around each other that would seem strange to an outsider. We noted this from time to time in conversation and shared a good laugh about it, joking that people must mistake us for an old married couple. But somewhere deep inside, I was not laughing.

And now I realized Holmes wasn't always laughing either.

I felt like hitting him. "You tremendous dunce!" I cried. "Did you think you were the only man in the world with emotions? Good God, man, how can you have in your possession such amazing deductive powers and yet so catastrophically fail to divine the feelings of your one dear companion?"

He blinked at me slowly. His sweating and shaking was gradually subsiding, to my great relief. "Surely you cannot mean…" he said huskily.

I sighed. "Oh, Holmes! Surely by now you realize--"

I never finished my sentence, because London's greatest detective threw his arms around me, pulled me close and kissed me.

Kissing Holmes was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. He tasted of tobacco and brandy and touched me like a drowning man struggles toward the surface. I felt a most delicious and ravenous thrill rush up through my insides and outwards, through my chest, fingers, cheeks, my stomach, thighs, toes. I wanted every inch of Sherlock Holmes to be mine. But even as I grasped desperately at his lithe, slender body, I knew he was in no state for such exertions tonight.

"Holmes," I said breathlessly. "Holmes! Wait!" There really was no way to sound commanding in the state he was putting in. He moaned and did something with his tongue and teeth at my neck that made me shudder. " _Holmes_." At this point I was not sure whether or not I was trying to make him stop. I knew absolutely I did not want him to.

"If you think that after all these years of the cruelest, most excruciating kind of thirst I am going to stop now when I have you in my arms, you are a madman," Holmes practically growled. I shivered and believe I may have made several sounds which I do not care to describe.

"Holmes, you're ill. You need to rest."

"There is time enough to rest. I intend to take this vigor in my blood and put it to use." He fumbled with the buttons on my shirt.

I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes wrestling alternately (and often concurrently) with Holmes's wit and Holmes. If you have never endeavored to do so, you cannot imagine how extraordinarily difficult it is to convince a brilliant man to get his hands off of you while they are massaging the backs of your thighs.

After some time spent bargaining, biting, persuading and pinching, I was forced to trap him against the headboard by straddling his thighs, pinning both wrists to the wall and pressing my body against his. This was by no means a flawless plan; it merely prevented him from going to work on me with his fiendishly dexterous fingers. Unfortunately, nothing could be done about his mouth that would leave mine unoccupied.

"Holmes," I said as firmly as I could with his lips on my throat.

"The answer is still no," he replied, not even bothering to move away, and oh, the sensation of his voice resonating through me was glorious.

"My dear friend," I said, "I will still be here in the morning."

At long last, Holmes gave a sigh and lowered his head to my shoulder. "Will you?" he said heavily. "Or will you have gone back to Mary and put my behavior down as the mad actions of a man under influences?" His fingers curled around mine. "Watson, I…you must know that I am only happy when you are with me."

I was reduced quite to speechlessness. Holmes was easily the least affectionate person I had ever known, and here he was spread in front of me, confessing his deepest emotions. It made him so desperately vulnerable, so very human, that it would have contradicted everything I knew about him had he not been speaking in his usual matter-of-fact tone. It was as if he were reciting to me exactly how he had solved a case.

He spoke more quickly, as if in a rush to say the words before he lost his nerve. "You are the strongest drug to me, and I fear if I do not have you now, in this strange time between night and morning, sanity will retake you and I will have lost you forever."

Despite his tone, I found him trembling again. I released his hands and they fell limply to his sides. When I wrapped my arms around him, slowly, gradually, his hands rose up again to rest peacefully in the small of my back.

"Dunce," I said affectionately. "Weren't you listening? Of course I won't leave you, Holmes." I took a slow, easy breath. Drawing in air had suddenly become painful. My throat felt constricted. "I am not sure if there are words for how I feel for you, but I think 'love' is the closest." His eyes met mine, as close to fear as I had ever seen them. I smiled down at him. "Yes, love is definitely the most suitable."

I laid down in the bed, which in truth was not quite large enough for the both of us, and opened my arms in invitation. Holmes hesitated only a moment before giving in and folding himself into them.

In this way, we slept until morning.

 

II.

What a morning it was when it finally came! To wake with your beloved in your arms slumbering peacefully, the light of dawn shining through the window, is the most magnificent morning of all.

Holmes was sleeping soundly, which was to be expected after the size of the dosage of his detestable poison. I left him there, pulled on my dressing-gown and went downstairs to make breakfast.

The kitchen was empty, and I recalled that Mrs. Hudson had left that morning for her cousin's house in the country. I was glad of the silence. It allowed me to go about my business in peaceful thought.

My unusual inclinations were not entirely unknown to me, as one can easily imagine. As a youth I rarely enjoyed the company of girls, devoting myself mainly to my friendships with young men. This I attributed to a gentleman's preference for the solidarity of brotherhood and hardly to any kind of physical attraction. During my time at school I may have suspected once or twice that women simply would not interest me, but it was my time in the military that brought me closest to my full understanding.

Being constantly surrounded by young, strong men of stout heart was thrilling, although I often found their lack of education and wit dull. Still, being regularly required to touch and examine them occasionally sent a disturbing thrill through me that was not entirely unfamiliar nor ignorable. When I was forced by injury to return to England I must admit that I was somewhat relieved. At last, I could put these strange feelings behind me and marry a proper lady.

And then came Sherlock Holmes, who aroused in me such curiosity that I could not possibly have put him out of my mind. The previous night made clear to me that there was no concealing my feelings, which did not frighten me as I thought they ought to. I felt instead a great relief and a sense of giddiness that made me want to rush back upstairs and take Holmes into my arms immediately.

There was a crash and a curse from the room above. I chuckled.

Holmes trod down the stairs and into his chair at the breakfast table with the grace of a drunken camel. "Watson!" he called. "I shan't be eating much this morning. Toast and a good cup of tea should do me."

I joined him shortly, pulling my chair close to his and teasing him lightheartedly for making me sleep so late. We kept the conversation casual, although there were moments--our knees bumping under the table, his hand on my elbow as we laughed--that reminded us that nothing would ever really be casual again.

He swallowed the last of his tea. "So, dear fellow," he said, "I suppose you'll be headed home this morning."

I shook my head

He smiled tiredly. "Good of you, Watson."

More hesitantly than the night before, I leaned across the table and paused just short of his lips.

"It shall never be the same," I said.

"So be it," he declared, and kissed me.

We hardly moved for some time, captivated by the assurances that the night before had not been a dream. Then Holmes's hand, under the table, made its way to my knee and began creeping upwards and our passion was renewed.

Somehow I pulled Holmes into my lap, knocking over his chair and empty teacup in the process. He wasted little time in depriving me of my dressing gown, whereas I merely took advantage of the fact that his was open. I slid my hands round to his hips and further back, enjoying the way it made his back arch, grinding his body against me. He tipped his head back and sighed. I pressed my mouth to his throat and made an attempt to replicate several of his tricks. If his reaction tells I did an admirable job. He tugged urgently at my waistband and I laughed at his impatience.

"Take me, Watson," he said huskily.

"Here?"

"Right here, on the table." He slipped his fingers the smallest bit down my trousers and I squirmed underneath him. It was Holmes's turn to laugh at me.

I responded by pushing him off my lap and onto the table, knocking over the rest of the dishes and my chair in the process. He pulled me down towards him by my belt. I planted a hand on each side of his shoulders and pressed a hard, bruising kiss to his mouth.

"I surmise I am not the only one of us who is not entirely inexperienced in these matters," he said wryly. "I had suspected as much."

"You may explain to me the seventeen facts which led you to this conclusion when I have good and buggered you," I replied with a grin.

There was a short period made up of tangling hands and fingers, the shucking off of garments and the occasional application of teeth to skin, just to feel the delightful shivers that resulted. Just like that, he was naked and my trousers were half-unbuttoned. Holmes was on all fours while I played the wiry muscles of his back like a fine piano. I thrilled in every noise that issued from his throat and every tremor in his limbs. It was magnificently overwhelming to have the great Sherlock Holmes at the mercy of my every whim, and I took advantage of his helplessness to explore every inch of him. I touched my lips to the back of his neck and trailed kisses down his spine while I felt all down his ribs, stomach, thighs. He writhed against me, almost beyond words.

"I seem to have robbed Sherlock Holmes of his tongue," I remarked, "an achievement few can boast of."

"Let me at you and I shall show you how very sorry you would be were you to actually deprive me of such an enviable instrument."

I nipped at his shoulder as revenge for his temptations and was satisfied by the ensuing shudder. "I should hope that instrument is quite enviable indeed! You must make up for the mediocrity of some of your others."

"Are you implying that your instruments are, ah, rather more exceptional?"

I reached for the small pitcher of olive oil, which was thankfully still upright. "I shall allow you to judge for yourself."

Thus followed an additional bout of clothing-shedding, followed by the tracing of the olive oil down the backs of Holmes's thighs before I decided to put it to its original intended use. 

I dipped my fingers into the oil and pressed them against Holmes. He was trembling so badly I had to put a hand on his hip just to steady him.

"Begging is not in my repertoire, Watson," he breathed, "and I do not care for your attempts to force it out of me."

I moved the hand on his hip to his neck and pulled him against me. "By the time I am finished with you," I whispered into his ear, "you will have learned many things. How to beg is not even the least of these." With that, I pressed my two fingers into him.

He gasped and rocked backwards. "I must say, that was the closest I have come to begging in years," he said breathlessly.

 I grinned. "You underestimate my abilities. If you still posses the power of speech it is obvious I am not doing my duty."

I explored inside of him gently, enjoying the electric shocks that jolted through my body with every moan and pant I elicited from him. I tried my best to be slow and gentle, but it was not easy. Resisting the impulse to pin him down and have him was growing painful.

He reached back and stilled my hand. "Watson," he said at length, "I am at a great risk of embarrassing myself if you do not stop."

"Shall I take that as a request?" I teased, curling my fingers inside of him.

Holmes's eyelids fluttered. "Take it as an order if that is what you want of me!"

"Then I shall be merciful," I said, and withdrew my hand.

He sighed and sagged back, the desire still humming through his veins. I coated myself with the remainder of the olive oil and just barely pressed against him.

"There is no possibility you could be so cruel as to torment me further," Holmes said with his eyes squeezed shut. "You may have your triumph. I will beg if I must."

"You were right. There was no possibility." With that, I slid gently into him.

"Ah…oh," Holmes gasped in an odd tone of voice. I do not believe I had ever heard surprise from him before. "I am unsure if 'exceptional' is precisely the word I would have used."

"What word, then?" I said, squeezing my eyes shut and very deliberately maintaining composure.

"'Considerable' would be here appropriate, I believe. Perhaps just…a moment…"

"A moment only, Holmes; I cannot wait forever," I panted.

I held him there for a while, buried deeply inside of him, enjoying the warmth and the trembling of his body and trying to resist the need to _move_.

"Caution and dignity be damned," he said at last. "Take me, Watson."

I obeyed.

At first he grimaced a bit, as if pained, but gradually his face relaxed as the pressure grew throughout the rest of him. Ah, what bliss, to see such ecstasy on the face of your beloved! It was like no other experience. Our entire bodies felt melded, as if we had truly become one flesh.

Our hands tightened around each other. A bead of sweat trickled down his back and I licked it up, relishing the cry of "Watson!" with which I was rewarded. I felt all my senses overloaded with pleasure as they had never been before. His aroma, his taste, his particular beauty, his voice, and most of all the feel of him enveloped me like a quilt on a cold winter day.

All of a sudden his muscles tightened underneath of me and spasmed, shouting my name as he reached fruition. The sensation of his ecstasy pushed me to my breaking point, and I came inside him, calling his name all the while.

We collapsed onto the mess of the table in a tangle of limbs and sighs. Somehow we landed face-to-face, our foreheads pressed together.

"I should mention, Watson," said Holmes, "that apparent mediocrity is often revealed to be extraordinary talent in disguise."

"What of obvious exceptionality, then?" I replied with a grin.

He sighed. "I have found it to generally be exactly as it appears."

I patted him on the hip. "I will allow you that such talent carries with it the curse of rendering the recipient, ah, unable to receive again for some time."

"We shall see about that," he said decisively. "Allow me an hour."

I chuckled and surveyed the table. "Mrs. Hudson shall be quite cross with us, not to mention suspicious."

Holmes idly flicked a fork onto the floor. "Mrs. Hudson confided in me several times that we reminded her of her late husband and his best friend if they were younger and handsomer and had kept their trousers on. "

I burst out laughing. "Mrs. Hudson? Privy to Offenses Against the Person?"

"Indeed. In fact, she once intimated to me her strange fascination with that pretty red-haired girl who frequently works with her father at the market. I suspect the Hudson marriage was a very interesting one."

"Interesting indeed! Thank God my--" I paled. "Mary. Oh God."

Holmes propped his head up on his knuckles. "This cannot be the first you've thought of her since coming last night."

"I thought, I simply…I was distracted, I could not keep my mind straight."

"Thank you," Holmes said modestly.

I felt ill. "I have to tell her."

Holmes took my hand. "This seems like the perfect moment to inform you of a conversation I had with your wife shortly before your marriage."

"I--what?" 

"You heard me." Holmes sat up and began rummaging through his dressing-gown. "Shortly before your marriage, Mrs. Watson came to me inquiring as to the, ah, nature of our relationship. At the time, I thought it no more than friendship, but she did not entirely believe me." He withdrew his smoking paraphernalia and began packing his pipe with tobacco. "The general message was that she understood that you would never be entirely hers, and that she was not at all put out by this. She is quite fond of you, and if whatever you did made you happy she would turn the other cheek, so long as it did not cause a public embarrassment." He lit his pipe. "Excellent sort of female, if any sort can really be excellent."

I was nearly rendered speechless. "What--Mary--and she never thought to have such a conversation with _me_?"

"My dear fellow," Holmes said, puffing on his pipe, "if a refined young lady had come to you with such a conversation a month before your marriage, would you not have reacted with appropriate horror?"

I frowned and conceded the point. "Still, I shouldn't spend all day here. She'll be concerned."

"The entire day will not be necessary," Holmes said lazily, tracing a finger down my chest, "but I do think I have need of you, Doctor, for at least another hour or so…"

I grinned and Holmes put out his pipe.

"An hour? You won't last five minutes…"

**Author's Note:**

> Last night unto my bed bethought there came  
> Our lady of strange dreams, and from an urn  
> She poured live fire, so that mine eyes did burn  
> At the sight of it. Anon the floating fame  
> Took many shapes, and one cried: "I am shame  
> That walks with Love, I am most wise to turn  
> Cold lips and limbs to fire; therefore discern  
> And see my loveliness, and praise my name."
> 
> And afterwords, in radiant garments dressed  
> With sound of flutes and laughing of glad lips,  
> A pomp of all the passions passed along  
> All the night through; till the white phantom ships  
> Of dawn sailed in. Whereat I said this song,  
> "Of all sweet passions Shame is the loveliest."
> 
> -Lord Alfred Douglas, In Praise of Shame


End file.
